Quote of the Day–Brian Hauss(6/6/2013)

To be sure, rummaging around through people’s personal papers may well turn up the occasional bad guy, but that is not the only consideration. No doubt law enforcement agents would also find it useful to walk into people’s homes at will, but we don’t allow them to do so because that would intrude on our reasonable expectation of privacy in our homes. And just as we reasonably expect privacy in our homes, so, too, do we expect that border agents will not base their decisions to search through our electronic information on a whim or a hunch. Put another way, requiring law enforcement agents to possess objective reasons for a search is a feature of our constitutional framework, not a bug.

(Emphasis mine.)

Brian HaussDHS Releases Disappointing Civil Liberties Report on Border Searches of Laptops and Other Electronics

June 5th, 2013


[For those who haven’t heard yet.  The DHS is claiming the following line of BS regarding searches at the border.

[A]dding a heightened [suspicion-based] threshold requirement could be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefit. First, commonplace decisions to search electronic devices might be opened to litigation challenging the reasons for the search. In addition to interfering with a carefully constructed border security system, the litigation could directly undermine national security by requiring the government to produce sensitive investigative and national security information to justify some of the most critical searches. Even a policy change entirely unenforceable by courts might be problematic; we have been presented with some noteworthy CBP and ICE success stories based on hard-to-articulate intuitions or hunches based on officer experience and judgment. Under a reasonable suspicion requirement, officers might hesitate to search an individual’s device without the presence of articulable factors capable of being formally defended, despite having an intuition or hunch based on experience that justified a search.

Translation:  “We don’t need to specify a reason why we are seizing and searching your property.”

Now many may have forgotten so I will provide you an extra reminder of the area the DHS would like to claim as free from that pesky 4th Amendment.

For more on that go back and read my article on it (dated 2008).  So think about what the department of homeland security is claiming as within their legal abilities, and then think long and hard about that map where they can put up “border inspection points” at will.  Think your safe just because you don’t regularly travel out of the country?  Get real.

Listen folks, you either have these rights or you don’t.  They’re not predicated on some theory that you surrender them because you want to do X.  NO!  If the government wants to search my personal effects, they must present a case including evidence that I have committed a crime, or that I intend to harm another.  *Note I said harm, the war on drugs needs to go to!*  The only way you end up with this current view of the law is through twisted perversion and a lackadaisical attitude that say “I don’t care, what’s it matter?”

Just because I want to fly to visit my friends in Nashville, doesn’t mean I surrender my 4th amendment rights and agree to have someone fondle me and my wife.  It’s horse crap and frankly if we don’t stop it, it will just get worse.  There’s two options for stopping it, we get the courts to do their damn job, or well, use your imagination for the second option.

News flash folks, in a free land bad people some times end up doing bad things.  Its comes with territory.  Honestly though even in your perfect police state, the crazy guy can still do damage, even more so due to the delayed response.  Grow a pair, embrace the responsibility and with it experience freedom.  It’s freaking AWESOME. –B]

SSCC TSA

But a TSA supervisor was himself caught on videotape last month stealing 12 Tylenol pills from a passenger’s luggage in Syracuse, according to a police report.

Stealing Tylenol, really?  I thought by the headline he was stealing prescription pain killers.  He was either fired or resigned that day and there has been no word of criminal charges.

State Sponsored Criminal Jeremy Hemingway

Because with the war on drugs, when you see some drugs steal them.  You can figure out what they are later.

Quote of the Day – Louis DeBroux(4/8/2013)

Can we at least pass a law requiring all TSA agents pass a doctor’s exam certifying that they are free from the malady of rectal-cranial inversion?

Louis DeBroux – TSA Foils Lotion Bomb Plot, Nabs My Daughter

April 8th, 2013


[If that were to happen there would be no one left in the ranks of the TSA.  I fail to find the fault with that policy. -B]*

*For some reason this didn’t post last night when I told it to.  Here it is now.

 

SSCC #564: TSA

Today’s goes back to the roots of why I started this count.

An honest tourist found a bag sitting in Orlando International Airport and turned it over to a Transportation Security Administration officer. Police say instead of taking it to lost and found, the TSA officer took it home.

Nice, a kid does the right thing and the TSA agent, as they oh so often do, acts the criminal part.

State Sponsored Criminal #564: Keith McKnight

Because when someone hands you something someone else lost, take it home, finders keepers and all.  Plus you’re an agent of the state!

SSCC #511 – TSA

A Charlotte woman told Eyewitness News she also had cash stolen from a TSA baggage inspector at Charlotte Douglas airport.

Reggie Edwards was arrested and charged with stealing cash out of a suitcase.

Edwards was arrested again Thursday after police said they linked him to stealing $150 from a woman’s suitcase just weeks before.

So much for their “zero tolerance” policy on stealing.  Someone explain to me how schools can take “zero tolerance” to a level where it resembles “zero brains”; yet the TSA runs it so low as to make it seem like it’s, “do nothing”.

State Sponsored Criminal #511: Reggie Edwards

Because when you get caught stealing as a TSA agent, your only mistake was getting caught.  Have no fear though, you won’t be fired.

Quote of the Day – Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson(1/26/2013)

Had this protest been launched somewhere other than in the security-screening area, we would have a much different case. But Tobey’s antics diverted defendants from their passenger-screening duties for a period, a diversion that nefarious actors could have exploited to dangerous effect. Defendants responded as any passenger would hope they would, summoning local law enforcement to remove Tobey—and the distraction he was creating — from the scene.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson – Aaron Tobey v Terri Jones

January 25, 2013


[First here’s the background on the story.

A Virginia man who wrote an abbreviated version of the Fourth Amendment on his body and stripped to his shorts at an airport security screening area won a trial Friday in his lawsuit seeking $250,000 in damages for being detained on a disorderly conduct charge.

Now let me translate Judge Wilkinson’s quote for everyone.

Because our TSA agents and federal government so dislike those who disagree with the government infringing on personal liberties and freedom.  People should no longer have 1st Amendment protections to their ability peacefully protest the behavior of the agents infringing on their 4th Amendment rights.

The fact that our paid government agents would pursue and harass a man for an extra 90 minutes because he was willing to protest is evidence he should not be allowed to voice dissent.  The reason he shouldn’t be allowed is because it compounds the ignorance and inability for the TSA to do its job thus making it more likely that an agency who has a track record of catching absolutely no-one to catch even fewer.

Instead the people should just silently undergo their mistreatment and act like good cattle and just get on the cattle car to the slaughter.  That way the TSA can continue stealing peoples private valuables to sell to others while under the protecting folds of working for the US Government.

Still think this whole thing is still really about making us safer?  The government does nothing but destroy and trample the rights and liberties of some to make others somehow feel they are safer.  When in fact the TSA guy just waves terrorists right on through because it’s merely an illusion and nothing more.

Just remember, Judge Wilkinson obviously despises the 1st Amendment as much as he despises the 4th Amendment.  Thankfully his opinion was the dissenting one.  -B]

SSCC #477 – TSA

It’s been awhile since we’ve come back around to the origination that gave me the idea for this list.  For a quick history of this type of behavior:

Remember, these are the agents that were caught, there’s going to be a large group that are not caught. The TSA isn’t held responsible for lost and stolen items, they receive a free pass. There is no incentive for them to solve the problem other than bad PR.  But we have a new bad agent to add to the list:

TSA baggage screener Sean Henry, 32, was arrested on Tuesday after a sting operation conducted jointly by the TSA and the Port Authority Police Department caught Henry leaving the airport with two iPads that had been planted as part of the sting, as well as numerous other electronics devices he had allegedly stolen from passengers.

I applaud the officers who did the right thing, but the fact is the government has created a situation that foments this type of behavior.

State Sponsored Criminal: Sean Henry

Because why shouldn’t a TSA be able to make some extra off the top from the people they’re already abusing.

Orwell Was Right on the Money…

So flying back last week I had to fly back commercial.  I flew out of Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) Terminal B, while waiting for boarding my coworkers and I grabbed lunch.  While eating one of them said, “TMM, look up to your right.”  I looked up and I sat there in astonishment and damn near devolved into a full verbal rant on the spot.  For you see, what did my wondering eyes see?  This pile of propaganda.

IMAG0443

(fine print: In Madrid, smarter surveillance helped cut response times by 25%.)

And there was more than just that, around the entire terminal were these ads all relating to the same big brother type mentality.  What I find most ironic though was the company who the ads were for:

IMAG0444

That’s right folks, the company responsible for that propaganda campaign was none other than IBM.  Why did I find it ironic that it was from IBM, well from their historical role with Germany during World War II.

That first picture though and it’s blatant propaganda is almost down right unbelievable.  Then I remembered that I was standing in an airport with A Security Theater at the front and everyone believes that they are actually accomplishing something.  Never mind that anyone with half a brain who can actually red team the issue knows that A Security Theater ultimately doesn’t really do anything to stop terrorism in the end.  It just makes us all live as slaves.

Nothing says free like being left to cower in front of someone who wants you dead and hoping that someone will show up and save you. I have a better idea, sling lead at over 800 fps and give the criminal a reason to choose a different profession.